Integrating Mesh and Meshfree Methods for Physics-Based Fracture and Debris Cloud Simulation

Abstract

We present a hybrid framework for physics-based simulation of fracture and debris clouds. Previous methods mainly consider bulk fractures. However, in many situations, small fractured pieces and debris are visually important. Our framework takes a hybrid approach that integrates both tetrahedron-based finite element and particlebased meshfree methods. The simulation starts with a tetrahedral mesh. When the damage of elements reaches a damage failure threshold, the associated nodes are converted into mass-based particles. Molecular dynamics is used to model particle motion and interaction with other particles and the remaining elements. In rendering, we propose an algorithm of dynamically extracting a polygonal boundary surface for the damaged elements and particles. Our framework is simple, accurate, and efficient. It avoids the remeshing and stability problems of pure mesh-based techniques and pure meshfree methods and offers high visual realism.